Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 2

The Wall

Much has been said about The Wall. Mostly, by me.

Here's more:

ARPC build a very wide bay, and found that they needed two smaller bays more. Toward this end, they built a wall of huge concrete blocks between the two halves of the bay. During most club matches, one half of the bay is used as either a safety area or remains available for the use of Club Members who are not competing. The 'other' half is used to build a stage for the monthly IPSC match.

The Wall doesn't extend quite the entire length of the bay. There were concerns that somebody might be replacing targets at the extreme downrange end of the "club" side of the bay while someone was engaging a target 'obliquely' on the other side, causing rounds to impact the berm of the club side ... possibly causing consternation or even minor injury to the club members on that side because of bullet fragments splashing off foreign objects on the berm.

To avoid even the least chance of that occurance, the IPSC stages on the 'other' side of the bay are always carefully designed so that their is no possibility of bullet impact on the 'club' side.

Thus, all of the stages presented there feature a number of targets placed so they can only be engaged parallel to the wall, and the targets are always sited uprange of the end of The Wall.

In the most common configuration, the IPSC shooter starts standing immediately adjacent to the wall, engages a few targets directly downrange, and then engages the rest of the targets at an acute angle to The Wall. Charge lines are placed, or other design considerations are imposed, to prevent the IPSC shooters or any other people in the squad from wandering past the end of the wall where they may incur injury from rounds fired from the club side.

You'll see this in the videos. I promised in Part 1 of this two-part series to show you more videos of people shooting this stage ...

And here they are.

Big Dawg shoots the stage with an Open Gun.

Doug shoots it with a Production Gun.


Fish shoots the stage carefully, but fairly quickly. (Note the magazine dropping during the reload in the thumbnail.) Because this is the last stage of the match, he is overjoyed at shooting "a non-open gun cleanly". He does a Happy Dance. SWMBO gives him "a round of applause". Fish expresses his joy verbally, and does another Happy Dance.


Fred (no photo available) shoots the stage very conservatively, in Limited 10.

SWMBO is careful to keep the gun mounted when moving between shooting positions.

Walt - has a lot of jams. This film is 7mb long, which shows how frustrating to the shooter a series of jams will inevitably be. Take a close look at the closing seconds of the film. Walt doesn't actually sweep his knee as he tries to Unload and Show Clear with a live round caught in the extractor, but it does look like it from this angle.

Editor unrepentant over cartoons

The Australian: Editor unrepentant over cartoons [February 16, 2006]

I offer this without comment. I report, you decide:

THE cultural editor of a Danish newspaper that started a global row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed today stood by his decision to publish the controversial caricatures, saying they were aimed at promoting debate.

. . .

"There was a legitimate news story we had to cover and we chose to cover it in a not very ordinary way," he said, referring to the letter he sent in September to 40 cartoonists asking them to draw the prophet as they saw him.

. . .

"But because we do have a tradition of satire in Denmark, some of the cartoonists, in fact, did make satirical cartoons, but that is what we do with Jesus Christ and that is what we do with the royal family and with politicians," he said.

. . .

When asked whether he regretted his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons, in light of the firestorm they unleashed in the Islamic world and threats against him, Flemming said it was like asking a rape victim whether she regretted wearing a short skirt.

"What I did did not transcend normal practice," he said.

(Emphasis added)

Gentlemen of IPSC: Walt

I use to play golf.

I wasn't very good at it, but I played it anyway (see "I Hate Golf")

One of the reasons I didn't enjoy it was because of the crummy people I ended up playing with. For example, I played for several years in the Portland, Oregon "City League". Businesses within the community would form teams, and we would go golfing, one team against another, at local golf courses around The City. There were about a half-dozen courses we played at, and we would play nine holes every Wednesday after work in a Round Robin arrangement. I mention this only because it explains why we ended up playing with strangers so often. Many of the people I wouldn't have associated with, given a choice.

I can't count the number of tantrums I witnessed. Somebody would get a bad lie (is that the right word), or slice the ball, or hook it, or skull it, or miss a putt. There are as many ways to err in Golf as there are in IPSC competition, but they don't send you home for being a dodo-head in Golf. More's the pity. After a couple of repetitions of these errors, they would start muttering to themselves, and sometimes end up throwing a club, or a ball, or breaking their 5-iron against a convenient tree. I swear, I'm not making this up. It's amazing how easily some people blame their inadequacies on a tool with no moving parts.

About ten years ago I completely gave up on Golf and took up IPSC as my primary weekend activity. I had been competing in IPSC off and on for about 10 years already, and I knew what I was getting into. I'm no better at it than I was at Golf, but I realized that I meet a better class of people on the Pistol Range than I did on the Golf Links.

I would much rather spend my time with gentlemen (and gentle women) than with overgrown adolescents.

After yesterdays column about the ARPC Club match, with pictures, I received an email from my friend Walt. He's the "recovering Revolver shooter" who spent the day coping with a recalcitrant pistol. It just didn't want to work right, and while The Good Lord and John Moses Browning know that a pistol match is not the best time to try out a new gun, sometimes you just can't resist the temptation. (I found myself in much the same situation around 2000, while I was trying to find a usable load for my 10mm Edge. I had loaded the ammo too long, and spent an uncomfortable day at Dundee having to manually rack the slide for every shot during the first stage. Fortunately, I had more than one load, and the gun was working fairly well by the end of the match.)

Walt wrote to thank me for posting the match films. He likes the moving pictures almost as much as I do, and wasn't at all bothered that so many of them displayed his nervousness and frustration while trying to clear one jam after another.

I was glad that he understood the reasons why I posted the videos. Maybe someone watching them would be able to offer a reason why the jams happened, and help him resolve the problem. And there may be some people who see only film of guns that work perfectly, every time, and don't realize that a reliable pistol doesn't always just happen. They may not be aware that a large part of The Game involves technical stuff such as tuning your ammunition to the idiosyncrasies of the gun.

But the primary reason why I featured Walt so prominently was because he was having a terrible day . . . and he was enjoying it.

Early in the match, every time he shot a stage there would be three or four people gathering around Walt to analyze the things they saw, and offering suggestions to cure the things they THOUGHT they saw. Try a lighter lubricant. Can you get a stronger recoil spring? Maybe the gun isn't going completely into battery. Is the problem occurring only with certain magazines?

Walt wasn't dealing with the problem all by himself. Everyone there was on his side, and showed it by being as supportive as possible.

Why?

Because Walt isn't a whiner.

It doesn't matter how his game is going, he's always even-tempered, cordial, and open. No sulking in the corners or snapping at his friends when things go wrong. He has no anger to take out on others. He doesn't swear, even under his breath. If something goes wrong, it's something that can be either fixed or endured. His ego doesn't get in his way. He's not there to impress anybody, but he does because he is Real Person.

Because Walt is a gentleman.

IPSC seems to attract this kind of people. Many of us have been around the block a few times, and have learned how to handle disappointment, and frustration. Sure, we see the occasional over-aged adolescent from time to time, but they don't seem to last very long. Nobody says anything (unless you have an unrelenting potty-mouth), but the camaraderie that typifies IPSC competition just doesn't embrace under-developed personalities.

If a person can't control his temper, we don't want to go shooting with him. Or her.

We like Gentlemen, of any age, of any gender.

Walt is one of The Good Guys.

Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 1

JerrytheGeek's Shooting Gallery: Albany, February 11, 2006

As I mentioned three days ago, I did get some videos of the latest club match. Some of them embarassing, some of them funny, some of them must curious. (All videos are 3mb to 5mb in size. Clicking on the video links should bring up Windows Media Player in a new window.)

These may not be of interest to everyone, but the selection does provide a look at what a club match is like. Most telling is the commeraderie, and the friendly atmosphere.

(Incidentally, not all of the videos are presented in this article. I have seven of the videos yet to be edited and loaded, which I'll present in a separate article Feb11 ARPC Match Pix 2.)

The videos are best justified as showing that it can be Winter in Oregon and STILL be warm, dry and sunny. Since the weatherman will have his revenge on us this weekend (freezing temperatures, wind, and snow mixed with rain is forcast for the Sunday match) I'm glad I have this record to look back at.

The lineup of 17 videos can be taken in haphazard order by clicking on the link at the top of this page. For those who know the Columbia Cascade Section members, and especially for those who were there, I'll try to organize them a bit better and provide a directory here. The videos are presented in the same sequence here as in the Gallery, but I've linked directly to the files here so you don't have to make a separate step through the website to see them.

I don't have the score sheet handy, and the actual names of the stages doesn't really matter, so I've assigned arbitrary names to each stage.


The Bobber Stage:

This was the first stage of the day for our squad. Facing a wall, there are double IPSC targets on both sides. Moving downrange, maneuvering around a couple of inconveniently placed barrels, there are mirror arrays on the left and right sides: three static IPSC targets, and a 'bobbing' IPSC target which is initiated by hitting a Pepper Popper. It's possible to hit the Pepper Poppers from the starting box, and our two exampler competitors both used that to their advantage, as the bobbers slowed down to an easy-to-hit cyclic rate in ten seconds or less.



Fred started shooting IPSC a couple of years ago, and spent quite a while being very deliberate in his approach. This year he has exhibited more confidence and more aggressiveness. He has always been an excellent shot, but now he is hitting the targets much more quickly. We were all glad to see him turn in an exceptional performance at this match, and I wish I had more film of him so he could see how good he looked.

SWMBO took on the same stage, using approximately the same strategy, but using an Open gun. She benefits from much more experience and is prettier, too!


The Classifier Stage:

As I mentioned before, we were tested on TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, an 11-round Comstock classifier stage which presents a mix of IPSC targets (two 2-target arrays, with no-shoot targets between each pair) engaged from behind a Bianchi barricade, and then three Pepper Poppers engaged from behind another Bianchi barricade. It's a hoser stage, with a kicker: the penalty targets!

Geek pain -- I missed the far-right IPSC target and hit the penalty target instead. I had 41 points out of 55 possible, but with 40 penalty points subtracted from that score I ended up with ONE point. I had a good time (in both senses of the expression) and it looks good on the video because you can't see the penalty hits on the film. One other shooter on the squad, Doug S., had got double no-shoots on an earlier stage, so I'm seen yelling to him "I did it for you, Doug!" Then you see Doug walking downrange to tape the targets, thanking me for my thoughtfulness. "No mission too difficult; no sacrifice too great" where your pals are concerned.

No, they didn't believe me, either.

Walt, "The Shooter Formerly Known As The Revolver Guy", had JUST given up his revolver (for the time being) and bought a Limited-class auto-pistol in .38 Super caliber from Fred. It's not clear how much Walt had shot the new gun before the match, but (as is not uncommon) he was starting out with a mish-mash of ammunition from various sources. He started out using some 20-year old Egyptian military ammunition, and it just wasn't working for him. By the time we got around to the Classifier stage, he had dumped about half of it on the ground and finally got his snoot into a box of 'the good stuff'. You'll hear some cheering at the end of this video, because this was one of the very few stages where he managed to make the entire run without a malfunction.

The Poker Stage:

The start position was "gun on the table, elbows on the table". It looked like a social situation to me. There were 4 IPSC targets in front of the table, with a lot of hard-cover and some ugly white stuff. Around the corner to the far left were a few more IPSC targets, then you had to run back half-way, turn another corner and snake down-range to engage the last three ISPC targets. Lots of places to lose time, but it was essentially a Hoser stage with many temptations to go faster than you could shoot accurately.

Big Dawg started us off with a demonstration of just how quickly a big man can move when he really wants to. He lost 20 pounds over the winter, and is working on another 20 pounds. At this rate, he'll be so tiny by next winter that he'll have to stay on the porch.

The Geek run wasn't as bad as I had feared. At least I got my shots and didn't hit any penalty targets.

And The Shipster turned in his usual smooth, no-errors performance. It's fun to watch him shoot, because every time he comes out he gets a little better. He should be bumping up a class before the year is over, if he keeps working at it.

There was an interesting rules question on this run: The Range Officer is suppose to make sure that every competitor starts with protective glasses and hearing protection, but who watches to make sure that the RO has HER ears on?

The it was Walt's turn. He's still experimenting with odd-lot ammo at this point in the match, and I moved in closely to see just what was happening to cause the jams. I thought it might be that his recoil spring was too light for the load, and perhaps the slide wasn't returning to battery, but that isn't apparent from the good view I had. Sometimes the hammer would drop but the round wouldn't go off; sometimes the hammer wouldn't even drop, which means he had to rack the slide for the next shot. You might run through this sequence a few times, perhaps you can spot something I couldn't. Let me know if you do, please. (I cut the film short after Walt moved away from the 2nd array.)

The Steel Stage:

This was a nice 'field course' with three Pepper Poppers ... left, right, and center ... that must be engaged from the starting box. Moving downrange, there are targets left and right which are placed so you almost MUST stop to engage them to keep from breaking the 180. We did, in fact, have one DQ in our squad because the shooter over-ran the array, then backed up to engage it, and lacked just one step from having moved far enough back that he could legally engage the uprange target in the array. SWMBO had to DQ him, and later reported that it was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. She has been a certified Range Officer for several years, works as an RO at almost every club match she attends, and has worked two USPSA National Matches, but this is the first time she ever had to DQ anyone. It helped that the competitor realized what he had done as soon as he took the shots, and he was just standing there waiting for the inevitable.

Big Dawg is the first example, and you'll see him move past the first target array before he realized he has gone too far. He DOES back up far enough to engage them safely.

The next shooter is Fish. He has two Open guns, and a Limited gun, but everything seems to be in the shop this week. Here you see how a good L10 shooter handles the confusing target arrays. I've often told him that he should give up the Open guns and shoot his Kimber all the time, but he just smiles and shakes his head. I know he has too much fun shooting Open to give it up. In Part 2, you'll see how he feels about the L10 gun at the end of a good match.


The ZigZag Stage:

No still photos available for this stage, and only one Video.

The Geek may not be pretty, but it's the only record of what this stage looks like. You can't see much of the stage, because of the extensive use of "Visquine" (SP?) as vision barriers. I'll be glad when all the vision barriers are Orange Snow-Fence, because you can see what's going on when you look at the film.

The stage forces you away from the starting position (centered on the bay, facing uprange) to engage a couple of targets around the corner on the left. Then run right past the end of the vision barrier, where you can see an array of IPSC targets. Moving left along the 2nd vision barrier, there's a large port where you can engage one, two or three IPSC targets far downrange. Finally, move back to the left and engage a mixed array of IPSC and steel targets around the end of the vision barrier.

You can go fact, or you can go slow. And you can pour a lot of rounds downrange at the last array if you choose to leave the far-left 'far downrange' target until you get closer to it instead of engaging it through the mid-range port.

That pretty much wraps up the first 5 stages. The last stage, "The Wall", will be exclusively featured in Part 2.

Vice Presidents: Gore vs Cheney

I'm sorry for US atrocities on Arabs after Sept 11, says Gore

The US committed "terrible atrocities" against Arabs after the September 11 attacks, according to Al Gore, President George W Bush's defeated rival for the White House in 2000.

Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up", often on minor charges, and held in "unforgiveable conditions", the former vice-president told a mainly Saudi audience at the Jeddah Economic Forum.

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong," he said. "I want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Mr Gore said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qa'eda's hands by routinely blocking visas for Saudis but he also challenged Arabs to take a stronger stand against Iran's nuclear plans.

In other news, Vice President Cheney has invited former Vice President Gore to go quail hunting in Texas.

Happy [Geek] Valentine's Day!

Today is Valentine's Day.

Guys hate Valentine's Day.

I'm not sure why this is, but it's true. Probably it's because we see it as a phoney "go shopping, spend a lot of money, be touchey-feely or you're a bad guy" kind of holiday.

You know, like Mother's Day, Father's Day ... there's even a Children's Day, for goodness sake! (My father once told me that every day is Children's Day; I replied that I hadn't noticed. But that's another story.)

It's not that I don't like shopping for SWMBO. In fact, I enjoy buying unexpected gifts for all of my family. I just resent being coerced into buying things for my loved ones.

And I don't do "wrapping". I'm a crummy present wrapper. For example, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping almost a month before Christmas this year. But it took me six weeks to get the last of the presents wrapped and shipped out to my children and THEIR children. In fact, they would still be waiting for their "Grandpa Geek" box if SWMBO hadn't volunteered to finish the wrapping. (I can't prove it, but I suspect that SWMBO re-wrapped all of the gifts I HAD wrapped, when I wasn't looking. Thank You, SWMBO!)

That's on a "GOOD" Holiday - Christmas - which I enjoy. I have less enthusiasm for holidays which are founded only upon the wish of merchants to sell me more stuff so I can give it to somebody who doesn't really need or want it.

So this year, I bought SWMBO a set of Kitchen knives.

I had been telling her for TEN YEARS that she needed a set of kitchen knives. What she had were decent knives [LIE ALERT!] that were never sharp, and which didn't match. I mentioned again last month that she needed a decent set of knives, and I would have given them to her but I never considered them 'romantic' enough. Knives are like vacuum cleaners or blenders, or a really good mixer which is another thing I talked about for years but never gave her even though she really needed it so she finally went out and got a Kitchen-Aid mixer of her own.

Anyway, she replied that she thought Knives were a very romantic gift, so I bought them for her for Valentine's Day. I gave them to her last weekend, so we could revel in the fact that I actually gave someone a gift before it was past-due. They had red handles; she likes red.

I'm not sure she really knew how to handle that, or the three jars of Cherry, Strawberry and Raspberry yogurt I bought along to 'dress up' the package. Well, they were red; she likes red. I got her a red range bag last year 'just because', and she never did figure out what the occasion was. The answer, of course, is that I saw it and knew she would like it, so I bought it and gave it to her immediately. It was wonderful, watching her fight the impulse to tear up.

The good thing about buying 'kitchen accessories' for your sweetheart is, next year you won't have to go crazy trying to find a gift that top last year's gift.

Guys are easy to shop for, for Valentine's day.
The choices are few:

1. Beer
2. Books
   
3. Really good Irish Whiskey
4. Guns
   

(If she buys you a gun, make sure you act like it's something you would have bought for yourself even if it isn't an STI. If she buys you a book, pretend you don't already have it. Trust me, this is important.)

Did I wrap her Valentine's Day Gift?

No, I did not. I put 'em in a gift bag, with a nice card that somehow managed to express my feelings exactly. The box of knives was too big to fit into the gift bag, so I bought a curled-ribbon paste-on thingie and stuck it on the top of the knife box.

Don' t never let nobody tell you I ain't a romantic.

PS: no, we didn't go out to dinner tonight, which was a darned shame because SWMBO had a gift-card for two free meals at a local fish house. Maybe next weekend ... I hope they have a good wine.

Bring In The Clowns

Cartoon Riots in Pakistan Leave 2 Dead

You can make up your own captions for this picture. Here's mine:

Try to find the clown in this picture.





Answer: All of them.

(Note: Ronald MacDonald is reported to be recovering nicely, one billion burgers at a time. We wish we could say the same for Austin Attorney Harry Whittington.)


UPDATE:
I posted this on 2/14. By 2/16 the image was missing, leaving only a link to my image-hosting service ImageShack.us

If you don't see the image at all, it may be because ImageShack has a policy of removing images which draw complaints from people who consider them 'offensive'. In that case, please contact me (contact information available at the bottom of this page) and I will post in on the server that I use.

Okay, I probably should have hosted the photo myself in the first place, but ImageShack is extremely easy to use. Now that it has disappeared, I'm using them again just to see if they are deliberately taking it down.

The (Muslim) Empire Strikes Back!

Caricature publisher reported to police - Aftenposten.no

Aftenposten.no (Norway) is one of the news sources I regularly check; the only reason I don't have it listed on my sidebar is that I run across it in references listed on OTHER news sites so often that I rarely go directly to that english-version website.

You may have heard that Norway is not in good odor with the Muslim Community these days, because of their association with the so-called "Anti-Muslim Cartoons". (I use the phrase "so-called" advisedly, in the sense I define below.)

Last week, in an action greviously under-reported by the American Press, the Muslim Community struck back. What weapons did they use? The legal process in their adopted country.

The Muslim Al-Jinnah Foundation will charge the editor of the Christian weekly Magazinet, the journal that published the controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in Norway, with endangering Norwegian lives.

Interesting that the Muslims are prepared to press charges against a media outlet which is exercising it's right to Free Speech, rather than against the people who respond to that speech with murder, arson, and assorted mayhem ... all of which are illegal in most countries, including Norway. Perhaps these actions are not illegal where Khalid Mohammad (see below) came from.

Editor Vebjørn Selbekk and Magazinet staff had no immediate comment on Thursday.

I, however, have a few comments. Read on ....

The organization delivered charges to Moss police station at noon on Thursday.

"The police must take Vebjørn Selbekk and put him in a safe place," Al-Jinnah leader Khalid Mohammad told Aftenposten.no. Mohammad emphasized that this remark was not meant as a threat to Selbekk, but rather to the threat Selbekk posed to others.

Mohammad said that Selbekk had endangered Norwegian lives and interests around the world by the provocative decision to publish the caricatures.

Veiled threats, crocodile tears. Mohammad isn't concerned about Norwegian lives. He's concerned about Norwegian freedoms, and is determined to undermine them in every manner he can.

"It is frightening that one person through so-called freedom of speech can cause such damage that he nearly sets two worlds up against each other. There are limits for what expressions are acceptable, also in a democracy. This is a case for the police, it cannot be solved by the masses," Mohammad said.

"so-called freedom of speech" ... I'm appalled. using the modifier "so-called" strongly implies that the expression is of dubious validity. There's nothing dubious about the freedom of speech, which Mohammad is taking advantage of here. It's just that he doesn't like the product of Free Speech, so he's trying to take it away from people who sn't think like HE does.

I presume (from his name) that Mohammad isn't a native Norwegian. If he was, his name would be Vebjørn Selbekk or some other collection of consonants and squiggly marks and crossed ohs. So this Mohammad character has immigrated to a new land, presumably because he likes it better than his home country, and now he wishes to change it to look just like the last place he lived. Is this the picture of an immigrant, or is it the picture of a viper at ones breast?

Selbekk and Magazinet are also being accused of blasphemy.

"But this is really also treason," Khalid Mohammad said. "He has damaged Norway abroad. Not least, the publication has resulted in Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan being injured. We feel for them," Mohammad said, and also noted that innocent Muslims in Norway now feel unsafe, and hat (sic) they face greater danger.

Norway recognizes another freedom: the Freedom of Religion. Consequently, "Blasphemy" (a term which rates right up there with "Miscegenation" for odious implication) is not a legally actionable offense. Rather, it's only illegal in theocracies. Apparently, Mohammad wants to establish a body of case law supporting a change in the entire legal, religious and cultural structure in his adopted homeland.

Treason ... probably IS illegal in Norway. But I doubt it includes printing cartoons of dead terrorists who learn, once they have reached a state of endothermic morbidity, that they have been lied to and there ARE no virgins eagerly anticipating their arrival in Heaven. (Although you have to admit, there may be a certain intellectual consanguinity between the Norse concept of Valhalla and the Muslim version of Heaven.)

I honestly can't picture Mohammad worrying about the well-being of Norweigan soldiers (very few of them, presumably, Muslim) in Afghanistan. The Norwegian Soldiers in Norway are probably outnumbered by Muslims almost as much as those in Afhghanistan, which is where the real danger lies.

We can't help but feel concern for the Innocent Muslims in Norway, though, and I'm glad Mohammad politely mentions them in passing while his obvious worry is for the vile non-Muslim native Norwegians whose last name doesn't start with "AL-".

Khalid Mohammad said that the Al-Jinnah Foundation is an international network that seeks out Muslim communities when there is danger of unrest.

"Then we tell them that peace is the best road to take. Protests shall use legal means. That is in keeping with Islam," Mohammad said.

Apparently, subterfuge and misdirection are part of the political judo available to the Mohammads in Norway. Khaløid (I changed the spelling of his name to better fit within the Norwegian community ... I'm sure he appreciates that) obviiously has been doing his homework, boning up on Norwegian Law so he could use it against his benefactors.

Norway being essentially a Socialist Society, three will get you five that Khaløid Mohammad is, one way or another, on the Public Dole. This is doubtless one of the reasons he immigrated to Norway; so he could undertake a Fifth Column attack on his adopted country.

But two will get you nine, Khaløid is a very well trained agitator and is doing just what his masters 'back home' sent him to do: undermine the sovereignity and peace of another European nation.

I'm not very sure of my spelling of foreign words, such as "Norwegian" and "Mohammad". But I'm real sure about the spelling of "Quisling". Norway would be well-advised to slap this honest-to-Allah traitor in irons and leave him there to rot. His ingratitude toward the country that took him in when he came begging at their door is dispicable. His protests that " ...peace is the best road to take. Protests shall use legal means. That is in keeping with Islam" is particularly reminiscent of the Koranic admonition that it is permissible to lie to an enemy in Dar Ul Harm, or the house or land of the enemy "for any jihadi". By his words, he has marked himself as an enemy of Norway and of civilized people the world over. (See also here.)

The rats are coming out of the woodwork, and at least it makes it easier to identify them. The question now is what Norway will do with their vermin.

. . .

This is not a diatribe against Muslims. It's a diatribe against terrorists.

Terrorists are most often defined by their slaughter of innocents, but they have many tools. Their goal isn't to kill people, but to assert their will over the population by any means available. They use the tools that work in the culture they mean to suborn and overturn. In peaceful, rule-of-law socialist countries such as Norway, they attempt to undermine the law by using the law against law-abiding citizens. Their goal is to subtly (or not so subtly ... whatever it takes!) alter the culture until they have established legitimacy of their barbaric version of culture. Think of them as parasites, it's a fair analogy.

One of their tools is 'reasoned discourse'; although it's (here) clumsy and obvious, there are people who believe that they have a right to be heard, however wrong they are. These people are called "dimmi" ... eventually.

<>One of their tools is treason. Subtle, slow, but inexorable treason. Not treason by individuals who have, by right of birth, reason to love their country. We speak of treason by individuals who have deliberately infiltrated a country, professing affection for the country and its culture, for the sole purpose of working from within to destroy that culture and replace it with another.

Thus, this is also an diatribe against Quislings.
The last Quisling Norway had to deal with was native-born, and they executed him by firing squad.

Mohammad should have taken this historical precedent to heart before he decided to sell out Norway to its current brand of occupiers.

I only hope that Norway still has the intelligence to recognize a traitor, the heart to withstand his insidious predations, and the guts to do the right thing.

2006 Albany February Match

Saturday last (February 11), we competed in the Albany (Oregon) club match and were pleasantly surprised by the clement weather. Coming off a 38-day cycle of unremitting RAIN, we woke up to high cloud layers which didn't present any raindrops at all. If this is Global Warming, I'm all for it!

Match Director Mike McCarter, who designed and set up the match only to spend the rest of the day at WORK . . . presented a six-stage match which can only be described as a "Hoser Match", because most of the targets were easy to hit and easy to see. This which encouraged us to run&gun as quickly as we could, and therefore screw up by the numbers Big Time.

Which we did. Results are available here.

There were 64 competitors at this match, which has to be some kind of record for a "don't-mean-nothin', just come out and shoot for the fun of it" match.

The first indication that this was to be an atypical match was when Ed D. suggested that I not take photographs of him, even though we were squadded together. He had seen the photos I took a couple a months ago, the last time we were in the same squad, and announced that he didn't recognize the "fat old man" he saw. I agreed to that condition, because frankly I don't recognize the fat old man I see in pictures taken of me at IPSC matches. After all, the pictures I take depict us at our most vulnerable moments, and the embarassement factor is high. Some of the most interesting videos show us when we make mistakes, and I don't blame anyone for objecting to this sort of imagery.

We're all friends here, and while we come to shoot, we don't necessary expect to be 'shot' at our worst.

Unfortunately, I managed to fall into that trap myself.

While we were engaging the Classifier, TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, I was filmed missing the T4 target (far right-hand side) incompetently. Instead of putting two shots into the edge of teh A-zone,k I put them into the penalty target which overlapped the shoot-target. I scored two misses, and two no-shoot penalties. Because I didn't call the shots as misses, and didn't even notice them until I was far downrange to Box B where I was to shoot three Pepper Poppers, I just continued my run and finished with a decent time (9.45 seconds) and a terrrible score (41 points minus 40 penalty points = ONE point for the stage!).

I ended up the lowest score of the day, except for the single DNF score which garnered zero points because the competitor didn't actually even shoot the stage.

I missed really fast, but that doesn't peel the banana.

SWMBO was right there with the camera, and I'll present the video soon. Unfortunately (or fortunately, from my personal point of view) you can't see the no-shoot hits. This distracts from the impact of the video. I can't say that I'm disappointed. When I get around to editing and posting the film, I'll link to it here. In the meantime, you can assume that I did what I said I did, and I present it here if only to serve as a good example of someone who engaged a difficult target in a risky manner (already leaning to "get out of the shooting box quickly"), gambled, and lost.

In the words of Marlon Brando, in "On The Waterfront": I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender ... instead of a palooka, which I am."

All of that is true, but the weather was fair and the companionship was excellent. I don't mind losing to people who are better than I am. I had a GREAT time, and this day will be remembered not because of the stages I screwed up on but because of the company I kept.

And if Doug S. ever reads this, I have a few words of encouragement:
Get a GOOD gun for your wife, and let her shoot it competitively. She spent all day taping targets. Such enthusiasm should not go unrewarded. It took SWMBO three years of observing, brassing and taping before she said "SCREW THIS! GET ME A GUN!"

I will guarantee that SWMBO will happily spend as much time as is needed to coach your good wife, and she will beat you at a regular club match before the year is out.

And that will be one of the best days of your life. There is no day better than a day at the range, and there is no day at the range so good that it can't be improved by the companionship of your wife.

Quail 1, Veep 0

USATODAY.com - Cheney shoots at quail, hits hunting companion

Okay, Children, here's your gun-safety test for today:

Which is more dangerous: a politician with an agenda, or a politician with a gun?

If you ask Austin Attorney Harry Whittington, I bet he'll go for Door Number Two.

According to the USA Today account, Whittington managed to drop behind the group of quail hunters which included Vice President Cheney, put himsef between the 'line' and the sun, and when a quail broke between them VP Cheney scored at least One Bravo, One Charley hits on the attorney's head and chest with a shotgun.

Good thing for Whittington that Cheney was using Quail Loads. He (Whittington) is in the hospital with with a face-full of what we presume are number-8 shot strikes in the tender areas of his upper torso.

I like Cheney's politics, generally, but I would never go hunting with him. I value my eyesight too highly to risk it for the dubious honor of hunting with the VP.

Oh, sure, this stuff happens. It happened to me once, when I was a teen-ager. I went rabbit hunting with some friends, and one friend skipped a .22 Long Rifle round within yards of me while shooting at a jack rabbit.

I refused to continue the hunt, and I never went hunting with him again. Life is short enough already, there's no need to worsen he odds of honorable retirement by hunting with people who don't keep in mind the three rules of gun safety. (If you have any doubts about what they are, go read Xavier Thoughts.)

"Katharine Armstrong, a prominent Texas Republican who witnessed the incident on her family's 50,000-acre spread in South Texas", said "these things happen."

Well, yes, they do. But they don't happen to people who are more concerned with gun safety than they are about bagging a quail.

Actually, Xavier's comments about this incident are much more non-committal than I feel is justified. (No criticism intended toward Xavier ... he treats it very much 'tongue-in-cheek', which I suppose is possible if you still have a working tongue with which to speak after you have been shot in the face.)

Maybe Whittington, the victim, was somewhere on the hunting field where he shouldn't have been. Maybe it's true that 'these things happen.' But 'these things' should NOT happen, and to make your press-release spin emphasize that 'it was a shotgun, not a rifle' is just a shoddy way to minimize the political fall-out of an incident which has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

It's a matter of gun safety. There is no compromise possible in this area. I'm appalled at the mere attempt to minimize the possibility of egrigious damage due to the gun-handling of the Vice President.

Strangely enough, I tend to judge people by their demonstrated judgement. I watch people, and I judge them on whether or not I would be comfortable hunting with them. Cheney fails the sniff test here. That the victim (for so he is) was 'in front of the sun' is no excuse; if the shooter can't tell for certain that it's a safe shot, he shouldn't take the shot.

There's no justification for a hunter to shoot when he isn't certain of his 'backstop'. If you don't have that basic safety rule firmly in mind, you shouldn't take the stop.

I've violated some safety rules in my time.

Once I failed to "Unload and Show Clear" correctly at an IPSC match. Nobody got hurt, but I was wrong.

Six months (or more) ago, I talked about Grumpy Old Men, hi-lighting the time I almost shot my father's leg off because I just didnt' have a good understanding about the Rules of Gun Safety.

In fact, I even spent some time discussing how a LEO could experience an Accidental Discharge, and still not be personally responsible for it.

So I accept that shooting accidents can happen to "the best people":, and I thoroughly understand the causes and that the un-expected always happens when you least expect it. (Otherwise, it wouldn't count as an "un-expected occurrance.")

Doesn't matter.

VP Cheney mucked up, and it's a mistake for the incumbent spin-machine to pass it off as a "Shit Happens" event. It irresponsible to treat the incident that way, and it undermines what SHOULD be the message of the shooting "community" when it tries to portray itself as a responsible, safe activity.

Lesson #1: shooting can be dangerous to innocent bystanders.
Lesson #2: we exercise our sport with full understanding of the consequences.
Lesson #3: when one of our members screws up, we're the FIRST not to tolerate a lapse in judgement.
Lesson #4: Any lessoning of the acceptance of responsibility from the person holding the gun is not acceptable.

Nobody ... repeat, NOBODY ... is exempt from the high standards which we impose upon the practitioners of our sport. Any attempt to offer mitigating or extenuating circumstances for what is so patently a violation of basic safe gun-handling rules is simply unacceptable.

Because he is a politician, Cheney should volunteer for a safe-gun-handling class immediately. The NRA offers them for a reasonable cost. The price of NOT admitting that his gun-handling skills are less than they should be is not only politically unacceptable, it is practically unacceptable as well.

I wouldn't go hunting with him. Would you?

H/T: Fish or Man

NRA bill would OK guns in cars at work in Florida

MiamiHerald.com | 02/08/2006 |

TALLAHASSEE - The National Rifle Association is pushing a bill that would penalize Florida employers with prison time and lawsuits if they prohibit people from keeping guns in their cars at workplace parking lots.

But the proposal is facing stiff opposition from a group just as powerful in the state capital as the NRA: Florida's biggest business lobby.

Mark Wilson, a vice president of Florida's Chamber of Commerce, which represents 136,000 businesses, said the proposal, to be voted on today in a House committee, is ''an all-out assault'' on employer-employee relations that intrudes on private property rights.

Okay, we've lost this one already. They've played the PropertyRights Card.

Wait a minute, this doesn't work for private citizens. Why should it work for businesses?

Do we have property rights? According to the US Constitution, we do.

According to the Supreme Court, we don't.

With other business groups expected to join in, the widespread opposition to the NRA bill sets the stage for a rare power struggle between two of the Legislature's mightiest lobbies. And some political observers predict that, for one of the first times in recent history, the NRA will lose in the Legislature of a state where one of every 49 people has a concealed weapons permit and an estimated six million own firearms.

And Big Business has 49 out of 50 legislators in their pocket.

Anybody want to make a prediction on this one?

Here's mine: the NRA is counting on Roberts and Alito to be firmly entrenched by the time this reaches the Supreme Court of the United States, and they have a feeling that if they don't win the issue, they may score broader points vis-a-vis the whole Second Amendment thingie.

On the other hand, the NRA "leadership" (hah!) has consisted of a bunch of lunkheads for the past twenty years, with the possible exceptions of Jeff Cooper and Charlton Heston.

Cooper (85 next May 10) is pretty broken-down now, and Heston (82 next October 4) is in an advanced state of senility, but between the two of them they STILL have more guts, gumption and good sense than the entire current NRA-BOD.

They might be able to pull off a hat-trick like this, but I don't think the Ninnies at NRA can do it.

Bill sponsor Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican, said he filed the legislation to prevent ''back-door gun control.'' In the past two years, he has successfully sponsored bills limiting lawsuits against gun ranges, preventing cops from compiling electronic lists of gun owners and expanding people's rights to use deadly force if they feel threatened outside their homes.

''We just disagree that the business community's private property rights trumps my Second Amendment rights,'' Baxley said, noting he doesn't personally support carrying firearms in the workplace.

Under the bill, if business owners ban guns in cars on workplace parking lots, they could get sued and charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. The bill has an exception for places like schools, where guns are banned by law.

(I don't know, maybe I'm over-rating the NRA. What do you think?
Do they really believe they can get, say, a ConicoPhillips Distributer thrown into jail?)

The measure was inspired by a case out of Oklahoma in 2002, when a dozen paper mill workers were fired after bosses found out they had guns in their cars. Oklahoma lawmakers passed a law similar to the Florida proposal, and business owners sued in federal court. Among them: ConocoPhillips. The NRA then launched a boycott, replete with billboards saying, ''ConocoPhillips is no friend of the Second Amendment.'' Since then, four states have passed laws like Oklahoma's, seven are considering them, and five killed the idea with relatively little debate, said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Oh oh, The Brady Bunch!
Hmmm ... perhaps it comes down to whether our Ninnies can beat their Nincompoops.

It's going to be an interesting show to watch.

Anybody got Popcorn?

Family

My son lives in Colorado, and works nights. His wife, Alysha, works during the day. This must be rough on them but they seem to manage. At least it allows them to spend plenty of time with their three children: Lizzie, Connor, and Jake.

Last night Alysha had put the kids to bed and took her bath, then went to check on the children before she went to bed.

She found little Jake, their youngest at 16 months, in a 'coma', and turning blue.

She picked him up and forgot all of her CPR training. She patted him on the back, shook him, patted him some more and finally got him breathing again. She called for an ambulance, then called Ben at work to come home. She went with Jake to the hospital while Ben stayed with Lizzie and Connor.

The doctors decided that Jake had some kind of virus, like a cold, and while they could do no more about the virus than they could a cold, they could treat the symptoms and monitor his condition. They medicated him against sinus infection, cleaned accumulated mucus out of his nose and mouth, and put him in an oxygen tent.

(Incidently, Alysha had taken Jake to the doctor yesterday, to check on what seemed to be an incipient cold. The doctor prescribed some cold medication with Codiene, but they hadn't filled the prescription yet. The doctors this morning told her that if she had given that medicine to Jake, the Coceine would probably have prevented her from ever being able to wake him up again.)

Today the other children were being watched over by family members while Ben and Alysha were in the hospital. Late this afternoon they took Jake out of the oxygen tent long enough for Alysha to hold him. This evening, the hospital released Jake and, as of 40 minutes ago (when I talked to Ben), he was resting comfortably.

Ben said they were all trying to get some sleep, so please call back tomorrow, preferably sometime after 11. He sounded tired, so I kept my conversation short. I just told him how proud I was of Alysha for saving little Jakes life.

--

This probably sounds like a fairly coherent account, but it wasn't the way I got the news.

The first word I had of the crisis was when my mother called a little after 7pm tonight, saying that she got the news this morning from Ben's mother, only that he had been found in the crib, in a coma, turning blue, Alysha got him breathing and to the hospital, he seemed to be all right but they were watching him. The other kids were okay, Ben was at the hospital and probably couldn't take calls because they wouldn't let him have his cell phone 'on' there.

Mom had decided not to call me at work, because there was nothing I could do and I would probably just worry about him all day.

SWMBO came by after her Jazzercise class about a half-hour after I had talked to Mom, and when I told her what had happened she advised me to call Ben. She said if I didn't, I probably would worry myself sick and never get to sleep tonight.

Later my daughter, Jennifer (pregnant with HER second child) called to flesh out the details a little. She said I should call Ben, and if he was not in the hospital he would have his cell phone on and I could talk to him. If he was at the hospital, they would make him turn the cell phone off and it wouldn't bother anybody. She said that if I didn't call Ben, I would worry myself sick and wouldn't get any sleep at all tonight.

Why does everybody think I'm such a worry wort? What makes them think that my grandson's near-death experience would upset me so? Hah! They think they know me, just because they are my family.

And finally I called Ben for the summary, and the good news that the crisis was over.

My heart took a few jolts this evening, and you can imagine my feeling of helplessness at being 1000 miles away when we came so close to losing this beautiful child.

I'm coming down from my little panic attack now, I'll probably be able to sleep tonight after all. Writing this is just a nervous reaction, a way for me to step back a little bit and regain my equilibrium. And maybe, until I can talk to Alysha directly, it's a way to say how proud I am of her.

She did everything just right. She saved a precious life. She is my hero.

Thank you, Alysha.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, my loving family, for also watching over the doting grandfather.

How To Film IPSC Matches

I've recently been getting a lot of hits from Google searches about "How To Film IPSC Matches".

SWMBO and I have been doing a lot of that over the past several years, and those of you who have seen the results are probably painfully aware that our "on-the-job training" hasn't always produced pictures of the highest quality or greatest interest.

Still, we have evolved some guidelines that we hope to apply in future photography, and they may help you when you're shooting pictures while other people are shooting action-pistol stages.

The principles group themselves into five natural categories:

(1) Remember who wants to see the pictures, and why:

• People don't want to see YOUR friends; they want to see THEIR friends, or people they know
• Most important, they want to see themselves
• Photograph everybody, whether they are big-names or not, but be sure to photograph people who can be expected to perform well
• People want to see match winners, or stage winners, or the competitors who are most likely to provide a challenge to these people
• Sometimes, photos are used as training aids. It's a good idea to look for people who demonstrate the best approach to a given shooting problem; it's also frequently useful to photograph people who make mistakes, so they (and others) can learn from their mistakes
• Mistakes are often in the small things. Be sure to get the "small things" ... see below
  

(2) General rules for good action photograph:

• Put PEOPLE in your pictures! A photograph that just shows the targets, or the stage, is without interest. Remember, you're there to photograph PEOPLE. While it's often a good idea to take photos of stages to show their design, or props, it's boring.
  
• Try to film with the light source behind you.
  
• NEVER try to take photographs when you're looking into the sun. It won't turn out well.
• Be unobtrusive in your photography. Don't try to position yourself in a good place if it may interfere with the shooter or the Range Officer. Above all, don't be a nuisance, don't be a source of concern to the RO who may think you're in danger of being run over by the competitor.
• Ideally, the competitor should be unaware that you are filming, although it is a VERY good idea to get permission of the competitor before you publish photographs.
• Make sure you have a high-quality photograph; use a high-density digital camera, or a film with a speed appropriate to both action AND high quality. This is often a difficult balance to achieve, but while grainy pictures are often disappointing, blurry photographs are usually unusable. Film is a poor second choice, because you need to ....
  
• Shoot a LOT of pictures. You never know what is going to be important until you look at the results. You can feel good about throwing away a hundred pictures if the 101st is a keeper.
• Compose your photos so you have both the competitor and the target, or at least components of the stage, in the frame. When you have to make a choice, film the people!
• Use other elements of the stage ... the RO, props, trees, shadows ... to frame your primary subject.
• The best photographs illustrate a point. This is good, this is bad, this is exciting, this is colorful, this is fast ... the point isn't as important as making it visibly obvious.
  

Going back to the first rule, why should you include people in your photograph? Here are two pictures of an object ... a stage prop which includes a target array (two plates in the Tiger's 'eyes', and Pepper Poppers bordered by white-and-green penalty targets in the base):




Which of the two pictures is more interesting? Which gives you more information about the prop ... size, and the effect on the competitor?

Clearly, the photo on the right shows how big the prop is; and the dubious expression of the person in the photograph helps to establish that this is an intimidating target array. (The Pepper Poppers do not show up in the small-size version of this picture, so ALWAYS make a full-size version available so your audience can see the important details. This is a point that you should consider when you're publishing photographs.)


(3) Special guidelines for shooting still photographs:

• Take more pictures!
• Try to imply action with your timing; look for photos which show the slide cycling, the gun in recoil, brass flying through the air, a steel target falling down ... anything that implies motion or action.
• Shooters in motion are more interesting than shooters standing steel. Capture the shot that shows a shooter moving, with the body leaning at an acute angle, or one or both feet off the ground.
• Look for shadows that provide a more dramatic effect.
• Look for contrasts; put a shooter against a dark background, so the shooter and the gun (and brass!) show up better. Avoid action shots against a complicated, mottled background that may camouflage detail.
  

To illustrate that last remark, here are two consecutive photos of the same competitor on the same stage:

In the photo on the left, you see the face of the shooter, the gun, brass flying through the air (see the full-size version of the picture), and a good portion of the stage including targets. The shooter contrasts with the berm, as does the brass, so both show up well.

The photo on the rightshows little of the shooter, or the stage, and you get no impression of ACTION. The shooter is out of focus and blends in withe the RO and the background.

(4) Special guidelines for shooting videos:;

• ALWAYS edit your videos. Get rid of footage that doesn't enhance the performance you're trying to depict. Ideally, the film starts at the Beep of the Range Officer's clock and ends with the last shot.
• Sometimes, the most interesting part of the video is what happens before competitor starts or after the competitor stops shooting at targets. Let the camera run extra time, just so you don't miss the best part of the stage. You can always cut it, but if you haven't filmed it you don't have the option.
• Try to film EVERYBODY! The most interesting things (when somebody falls, when they bobble a reload, when a steel target is hit fairly but doesn't fall) never happened if you don't film it.
  

(5) Special technical guidelines, to make your photos and videos more readily available to your audience:

• Film is good, digital is better. Get a digital camera, of at least 3 megapixels density. Five megapixels density is better yet. You can crop still photos, you can convert your MPG to WMV format and reduce density, but if you don't CAPTURE the detail you can't PUBLISH the detail. Note: Ten Megapixels density will probably be more than you can use. See below.
• Get extra data chips for your camera, and be prepared to swap them out when they get full. A 1GB chip will hold MOST of a full day's shooting, if you're not filming every moment of every competitor's performance. Get two of them, and always delete files from previous sessions before you start the next one.
• Get at least one extra battery; preferably two of them. Always recharge your batteries the night before a match. Expect to run out of battery power (or memory space) at the most important/exciting moment in the match. Keep your replacement memory and batteries on your person, NOT in your camera bag.
• To save battery power, it's often better to keep the camera 'on' between photos if you expect to use it within five minutes or so.
• Use your zoom feature to center on your subject. Whether you use a tight zoom to fill the frame with images of the competitor, or open it up to capture both the competitor and the stage (or targets), pick a setting before you start filming and keep it there. It's distracting to have the camera zooming in and out during a competitor's run.
• The last rule is a guideline; sometimes it's permissible to zoom in or out, but you need to be very good at it to prevent losing the most important part of the film while you're searching to re-acquire your 'target'.
• Whether you plan to post your film on the Internet, or send it by email, it is discouraging to your audience when they have to wait for several minutes for the film to download. You may find it preferable to convert your MPG files to WMV files of 50% or lower density, just to get the movie to their screen. If you can present a higher-density version as an alternative, that's fine; if their interest is captured by the low-density version, they MAY choose to download another version. But probably not, unless it is "their" performance they will be viewing.
  

Note that you can use the "Windows Movie Maker" software (available as part of your standard software package on new Personal Computers with the XP operating system) to edit and downsize your videos.

Good shooting, and good luck.

Hitler Jugend

Nassau County students could earn as much as $100 next school year every time they turn in another student for having drugs, alcohol, weapons or tobacco on campus.

Spearheaded by the Nassau Alcohol, Crime and Drug Abatement Coalition, the program has tentatively been titled "Safe Schools," and it's planned to start in every high school and middle school in Nassau County in August if approved by members of the Nassau County School Board.

"This program empowers the child to create a safe environment for themselves," said Susan Woodford, vice-president of NACDAC.

Woodford is working on the program with other members of NACDAC, including Fernandina Beach Police Officer Marty Scott and local school officials.

According to Scott, the program would allow students who report on fellow students to remain anonymous; awards would be given for information that leads to an arrest.

Welcome to Nassau County, Florida, where your friends can burn you for cash.

This is not a new concept, and in fact this program has already been enacted in other American counties.

It was, in fact, enacted (in slightly different form, but with more far-reaching consequences) in 1930's Hitler Germany.

The target age-group was the same, and many of the aims were the same. Although the current incarnation is to "(empower) the child to create a safe environment for themselves ...", the tactics and priorities are identical:

1. Transfer adolescent allegience from the family or peer group to The State;
2. Undermine the definition between non-Statist groups (family vs peer group) to the benefit of State-defined programs, to the point where The State is defined as the ultimate authority and peer-group;
3. Establish a simplistic and personally rewarding relationship between the adolescent and The State;
4. Start with "wrong" activities being clearly defined in terms which have already been identified as "counter-productive", leaving no opportunity for opposing opinion and taking as granted that the defined activities, as the first step, and set up a relationship which can later move on to political "wrong" activities'
   
5. Create an environment of mistrust between children and peers and/or families, which may later be expanded to the benefit of to-be-defined Statist goals.

Is this the 21st Century's bid to re-enact the concept of antidisciplinarianism, or is it just an attempt to teach our children to compromise their natural loyalties for Statist goals?

The basic concept -- to encourage children to police their own environment for their own benefit -- may not be unworthy. But the techniques are, in that they use financial gain as the motivation. How big a step is it from earning a hundred bucks to rat out your cigarette-smoking friend, to earning the gratitude of The State for turning in your politically incorrect parents for using wrong words in reference to socio-political groups?

Hey, Kid. Over here. Yeah, come over here into the shadows. How would you like to earn a hundred bucks? No problem, I've got it right here, in cash. All you got to do is snoop around until you find one of your buddys with that Eeeeevil cigarette-smoke stench on 'em, and boogie up to the Principal's office. Just pony up a name, a description, and the big bucks are yours.

And your friend? He'll never know it was you. If you're real careful, you can finger the whole rat-bastard bunch of those second-hand-smoke killin' monsters. What do you care if they figure out who's turning them in? They won't be around any more. We'll bust them, and ship them out to the Anti-Smoking Education Camp. Isn't that A Good Thing? If they cared about you, they wouldn't be smoking, fouling up the air that you breathe. They're trying to do it to you, why shouldn't you do it to them first? And remember, we're gonna PAY you for doing a public service. Go buy an IPod on us. We'll take care of you. All you have to do is ... say, does your Dad smoke? Does he smoke in the house?

Yessssss my precioussssssss .......

To you, it may seem petty to view this not-so-new program as the harbringer of odious and oppressive police-state tactics.

To others, this may be a clarion call to shut down the unilateral measures invoked by the State before they invade you home, your childrens' schools, before 'they' can make it seem only right for your children to turn in their best friend or their family members for activities which were previously considered only marginally self-destructive.

Is this the Eye of the Needle, or the Camel's Nose under the tent of Personal Privacy?

freedom vs blasphemy

The recent brouhaha about the political cartoons posted in a Norwegian newspaper opened up an international can of worms. Reason has a good write-up about it in a "hit and run" blog here, and gleefully add follow-up comments here and here and there.

They also mention the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's objection to a Toles cartoon here.

There are also links to the "offending images" in the cited articles, although if you haven't yet seen the Muhammed 'cartoons' you can find them reprinted in the Brussels Journal here, or here.

I have decided to neither host the cartoons, nor to display them here, out of deference to the only Muslim friend I have; a Lebenon-born immigrant named Issam with whom it has been my pleasure to work for the past ten years. I haven't discussed this issue with Issam because I'm inclined to judge him as an individual, and I don't think he's the type to threaten to kill people because they have offended him. I assume he's typical of most muslims, and I consider him my friend although he is certainly not an admirer of President Bush. (Most of the people with whom I work on a university campus are not admirers of President Bush, and I decline to discuss politics at the office; instead, I discuss politics here. It's a lot less stressful than declaring jihad on Liberals or others who don't agree with my political philosophy.)

I've looked at all of the cartoons, and frankly I don't understand the point of half of them. Most of them aren't obviously depicting the Prophet Mohammed (spelling varies, I'll use this because it's more familiar to me), but it's fair to assume that at least some of them do. Many of them obviously link muslims to violence, and considering the upsurge in violence caused by muslims, that seems fair to me, too.

However, I will provide a link to the Toles cartoon, in case you have never seen it, and a direct link to it here.

The images which muslims find offensive were originally commissioned and published by a Danish newspaper last September. I'm still unable to completely understand why the Danes did this, but I assume that they were trying to build circulation by publishing something controversial (Human Events suggests, in the above link, they did it to send the message that "we cannot be intimidated." That didn't work very well, I think.) Nobody paid much attention to them at the time, and it was not until the Norskis (who don't like that name) republished them in January ... presumably for the same reason ... that they appeared on the Event Horizon.

If I do understand at least part of this correctly, Muslims don't believe that the image of the Prophet Muhammed (Mohammad?) should ever be printed, as it is disrespectful. And when the image is presented in a deliberately disrespectful manner, it is considered blasphemous. Even when the cartoons are reproduced by a muslim editor to counsel moderation. In one case, the Jordanian goverment called for sanctions against a newspaper there which reprinted the images.)

And Norwegian Muslims want their government to establish "anti-blasphemy laws" against this sort of thing.

Anti-blasphemy laws? In a secular country? What IS the world coming to?

I don't know if they're right, but in the particular circumstances it appears that these 'cartoons' are deliberately disrespectful and incinderary. Muslims the world over are outraged, and I don't really blame them. Well, perhaps except for the anti-blasphemy thing.

One man's "blasphemy" is another man's "freedom of speech", and I've probably been too long an American citizen to believe that "blasphemy" is a justification for "hardline muslims" to occupy embassies in muslim countries; or for threats against the life of Danish or Norwegian nationals. As for burning the national flag of home countries of newspapers which published the images . . . well, people burn national flags all the time and frankly I believe it has become a legitimate expression of disdain. If you're an American, the sight of another flag-burning doesn't quite have the same shock value it once had, so go ahead and burn them. We'll make more. (Well, actually China will make more, and we'll buy them from the Chinese because they're so CHEAP! But don't get me started.)

"Blasphemy" is just one more step on the slippery slope which leads to assassination of movie-makers. I admit, I'm no fan of Michael Moore or Bareback Brokeback Mountain, but that's just because I'm not interested in the story of two lonely cowboys so lame that they can't get a date with a good-looking heifer on a Saturday night. I'm voting with my pocketbook, folks; I'm not threatening to assasinate movie producers

Let's compare the muslim reaction to images of their prophet, to the American reaction to the Toles cartoon.

Toles showed a person in a hospital bed, with no arms and no legs. The chart at the foot of the bed was labelled "U.S. ARMY", and the graph displayed was down-hill (a negative prognosis?) A figure labelled "Dr. Rumsfield". He says: "I'm listing your condition as 'battle-hardened'." The obvious implication is that the U.S. Army has suffered grevious wounds, and the Secretary of Defense refuses to acknowledge that it is no longer capable of continuing to function.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America pooled all of their power and . . . wrote a letter protesting the cartoon.

That's it.

Muslims threaten to kill people, Americans write a letter.

It's an amazing coincincence, if you believe in coincidence, that TWO cartoon-related incidents occurred within a couple of days of each other. Also, to compound the coincidence, consider that the Tole cartoont provided a perfect opportunity for the American government to demonstrate a civilized response, in direct contrast to the response of muslims the world over.

I don't really believe that Toles drew the cartoon at the behest of our government, but neither would I be surprised if he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for performing a great and valuable service. It set up a beautiful reposte, at no cost to America except for a measured response of righteous indignation.

When the Muslim world begins to understand that threats of violence, or violence itself, is not an acceptable response to insult (even an insult to your religion), then they will be ready to join the rest of civilization in building a world which allows different viewpoints to exist. Until we, and they, reach this point we won't have a reasonable chance of survival.

A couple of days ago, I read an article about a Muslim website for children, in which Hesbollah essentially demands the return of Seville to Muslim hegemony. I was surprised to learn that Muslims ruled Seville for a thousand years, and was even more surprised that this terrorist group has now decided that they could begin pressing their claim to a land and a people which they had controlled through right of conquest.

THIS is the most disquieting event in recent weeks, to my mind. A people so blind to the right of others to practice their own religion and culture in peace, is a people who are capable of any injustice in furtherance of their own agenda.

It may not be enough for us to provide examples of 'measured reaction', but ultimately it's encouraging that someone had the good sense to take that step, anyway.

Of course, the madmen who are orchestrating this violence-fueled drive to rule the world on their terms won't even notice what's going on. I hope that there are a few muslims left who CAN see it, though.

It won't solve anything by itself, but at least it's a small step in the right direction.

Oh, yes; one more thing:
If you're a newspaper editor, and you have decided to demonstrate that you "cannot be intimidated", you might consider that the attention you generate by deliberately provoking a group of extremist may have repercussions more extreme than you expect, and that they targetted group might just land some innocent people in deep doo-doo. I'm talking about Danish companies whose products are currently being boycotted by muslims, and the burning of embassies.

Muslims the world over are joyfully indulging in the opportunity to spank western butt.

Hey, Danish Editors ... maybe you CAN be intimidated.

"You know, nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance."

XL650: .38 Super

AsI mentioned in the first half of this 2-part series about the Dillon XL650 reloading press, after 9 years of usage I had accumulated set-ups for several calibers ... specifically, 9x19, .45acp and 10mm pistol calibers.

A2K and STI:f
In 2000, SWMBO and I flew to Watervleit, NY, for the A2k Aware Match (Aware, 2000). My online (Unofficial IPSC List) friend Patricia LeGere was the MD, and her husband Warren was the Range Master for what turned out to be one of the best organized match I have ever attended, USPSA Nationals not withstanding.

We had volunteered to work the match, as Range Officers. SWMBO was a RO, and I had been a Certified Range Officer (CRO) since 1997. Still, this was the first Major Match we had worked, and we were pretty excited about both the match and the trip. We had never flown cross-country with guns, gone to a match farther from the Pacific Ocean than Nevada, or in fact been to New York at all. And, in point of fact, we had never met Pat or Warren, although I had been corresponding via the Internet with Pat and a group of like-minded IPSC competitors such as Arnie Christianson, Troy McManus, and Pete Goloski (Julie's father).

We got on a plane in Portland, Oregon on a Wednesday morning and spent the entire day flying. This is not one of SWMBO's favorite ways to spend the day, so by the time we landed in Albany, NY, via Atlanta (don't ask) she wasn't feeling well at all.

SWMBO spent the next day in bed, and in the can. I walked across the street from the motel (reservations and payment courtesy of AWARE) and had breakfast, then walked back in the rain where Pat was waiting to take me to the range.

We spent two days helping set up the stages, and Warren LeGere taught me everything I now know about stage design and construction. The man is a literal genious, and I'm disappointed that the LeGere's have burned out and are no longer running AWARE matches.

The match was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, but Friday was the RO match. We had brought only one gun ... the 10mm STI Edge ... with four magazines, one belt (which didn't fit SWMBO all that well), and a ton of 10mm ammunition.

I shot the RO match on Friday Morning, all 12 stages, and it was a blast. I was squadded with Michael Chludenski and "Tillman" (a vendor, darned if I can remember his first name offhand), and a third guy who I can't remember at all. Embarassing, but it was a while ago and I'm old so I can be forgiven these lapses of memory as easily as I can be forgiven for this diversion from the main theme.

I had no problems with the match, other than it was so challenging that I was often not able to shoot up to my class.

SWMBO shot the match in the afternoon, and had a couple of problems. In stage 4, she dropped her fully loaded 140mm magazine during the Load and Make Ready, and the RO there courteously picked it up and handed it to her, so she stuck it in the gun and assumed the ready position.

Did I mention that the surface at the Watervliet Gun Club is sand? No? Well, it's a funny thing what sand does when it gets inside a hi-tech pistol. It stops it, right now. SWMBO got off 3 shots in a twenty-something stage with a lot of tiny Steel Plates, and had to fight the gun for the rest of the stage, before she finally realized that her time was going to be so long that it didn't matter how many targets she hit, or even shot at. She quit about half-way through the stage, and if she didn't zero the stage it was close enough.

We had been cleaning the gun every other stage, because the hard-cast bullets and cheezy Unique powder combined to foul it pretty fast. The gun had been cleaned (and oiled) before this stage, but we cleaned it again as well as the magazine, and wiped down any ammo that had been in a magazine that was in the gun. Sand was everwhere. That's when I realized that, with a tight slide-to-frame fit, you can't afford to compete with anything but the best powder and bullets available.

The point of this trip down memory lane is that Dave Skinner, President and CEO of STI International, was running a table in the vendor tent, and while Sandie was drooling over a hard-chromed STI Tru-Bore with pink grips, I was finally meeting personally another denizen of the Unofficial IPSC List. I found Dave to be personally charming, technically competent. For example, he told me that "a gun is a machine. It needs oil to work right. Oil on a gun is good; more oil is better.")

He's also a brilliant reconteur, and our evenings around the campfire in the court of the match hotel will remain among my favorite memories. (This impression may be, in part, because one of the benefits of voluteering to work the match for per diem, match fees and lodging, and in recompense for our having paid over $1000 for our travel expenses, Pat had offered to provide all the Crown Royale I could drink around the campfire.)

When I got back to Oregon, I contacted the vendor which Dave had recommended and bought the first of many cases of Montana Gold (200 grain jacketted) bullets for the 10mm. I also ordered a four-pound keg of Vihta Vourhi N320, which works just FINE in the Edge without fouling the frame rails ... and it is a fine-grain powder, so it measures a lot more accurately than did the egrigious Hercules Unique. The only problem is, it's not available 'locally', so you have to look around for a reliable supply. The bullets can be ordered directly from Montana Gold, and I've found that they are an excellent company to do business with.

SHIRLEY:
The next year, 2001, SWMBO and I attended the Area 1 tournament in Washington. We realized that we couldn't reasonably share a gun here because we would be competing in the same squad. Consequently, SWMBO opted to shoot The Beloved Kimber (rather than the S&W 659, which made holes too small for her to see) and I shot the Edge.

To our delight, we were squadded with a lot of people that we had known either well or peripherably, including Jim "Bumstead" Boemler, Dave Skinner, Steve "Zippy" Zopfi, Randy "Randomly Hitten'" Witten, Mark "Hobo Brasser" O'Shea, George "Earthworm" Jones and his son Bryan "Inchworm" Jones. (George and Jim had come to Oregon in previous years to compete in both the CCS Sectional and the Dundee Croc Match. Mark and Randy are locals, and Steve lives in Washington and was not only a friend of Jim's but also an IPSC List subscriber.)

During the match, Dave watched SWMBO fight the recoil of The Beloved Kimber ... the only pistol I own which works better with cast lead bullets and chunky powder than with more sophisticated ammunition components ... and commented that it was a shame that I made such a nice girl fight the old clunker. The first evening of the match, we took over Bumstead's house for an impromptu BBQ, and somebody (I think it was Witten) brought along a couple of bottles of spirits. One thing lead to another, and by the end of the evening Dave had made us an offer we couldn't refuse on a slightly used hard-chrome STI Tru-Bore race gun.

Being sober enough not to ignore a generous offer, I not only said yes, but "Hell Yes!". And forgot about it, because Dave had put his nose in the neck a couple of times that night, and I didn't think he would remember it the next day.

Imagine my surprise when, next week, I took legal posession of a beautiful STI Tru-Bore race gun with a hard-chrome finish, powder-blue grips, a "Parrot" OK sight, one 10-round magazine, two 140mm magazines, and one 170mm magazine ... all STI manufacture, of course.

Dave is a man of his word, which is demonstrated daily by his business practices. You buy an STI, you've got not only one of the finest competition-quality pistols on the market today, you get a warranty that rivals that of Dillon itself. It breaks, send it back. They fix it, and send it back to you. Dave has become a friend, but he's a friend to every customer of STI. Everybody gets the same deal, although admittedly the Custom Shop has been pretty busy as their customer base has grown and turn-around time may occasionally been as strained as any of the better gunsmiths. Still, it's an all-American gun, and to misquote Jeremiah Johnson in reference to the Hawkens Rifle, "Hell, it were a genuine STI, and you can't get no better."

During this process SWMBO and I became Marketting Representatives, authorized to possess and use extended-capacity magazines for the purpose of demonstrating the product for LEO, Military and other potential customers. We were agents for the manufacturer, and thus authorized the same privileges as the manufacturer in regards to hi-cap magazines under the then-current laws regulating hi-cap mags. [whew!]

I was in a position of put-up-or-shut-up, so I ordered a case of Montana Gold 115 bullets, a thousand Winchester .38 Super cases, and a keg of Vihta Vourhi N350 powder. I was going by the load data of Jeff Maass's reloading page, and my own prejudice of quality components. Nothing but the best for SWMBO. Also, from Dillon I ordered a Safariiland belt combo and three Safariiland magazine carriers.

Talking to local folks who used the .38 Super, I heard that many people preferred the .38 Super Comp brass rather than the ordinary .38 Super. I asked Dave about that (by email), and with typical Skinner candor he replied laconically: "Why you want to make it more complicated? The regular super brass works just fine, don't muck it up by spending more money on that Super Comp stuff." As usual, Dave was right and the gun ran just fine with .38 Super brass ... from any vendor, the gun didn't care as long as it was the rimmed case. (The extractor was tuned to that brass, and does NOT like the rimless .38 Super Comp brass. Didn't then, doesn't now, and we haven't changed the extractor yet.)

Looking at the Dillon catalogue, I realized that I could load .38 Super using the same Lee Dies that I had been using for the 9x19 cartridge. I didn't bother investing in special dies, just changed the seating depth on the second die and the charge on the powder measure, adjusted the crimp die, and started loading .38 super ammunition. I think it took me about 10 minutes to get the right combination. After that, I spent a couple of hours of range time with a chronograph to determine the best powder charge, and the gun ran like the proverbial fine Swiss watch.

Loaner:
The next year, I had some serious problems with the Columbia Cascade Sectional match. On one difficult stage, I had more penalty hits on close-set no-shoot targets than I got on the scoring targets. Well, it was a tough stage and I was under considerable competitive pressure. But a couple of weeks later, I happened to pick up my WWI 1911 and discovered that I couldn't see the sights. Looking again at the Edge, I found I couldn't see more than a blur where the sights should be, either.

I began a correspondance with Dave, asking him what changes he recommended to change the 10mm Edge into an Open gun. I mentioned that I was considering mounting a dot-sight, swapping the 10mm bull-barrel for a compensated barrel (I knew STI could build me one, or a competent gunsmith could thread the existing barrel and install a screw-on compensator.) I also asked about required changes to the slide and even the ejector.

Dave replied that he would hate to see me "muck up" a perfectly good gun, and made me another offer on a gun they had in their shop which had been built as (apparently) a prototype of the Competitor.

Thus I ended up with another .38 Super to load for, albeit with a Scheumann Barrel and the necessary blast shield to protect the C-more sight.

I immediately put in an order for "replacement" 140mm and 170mm magazine tubes, springs and followers. NOT a manufactured magazine (illegal under then-current laws, and the vendor didn't have my documentation which stated that I was an "agent" for the manufacturer). I bought the magazine base-pads from another vendor, and was able to assemble completely legal hi-cap magazines for the pistol. I admit, the gun was so fun to shoot, I went a little crazy for a while there.

The Scheumann (I'm probably not spelling that correctly) barrel had an entirely different reaction to the load which I had been using for SWMBO's ammunition. I experimented with the loads, and found that the 7.9 gr VV N350 load with 115gr MG bullets was just a little light for that barrel. I increased the powder charge up to, eventually, 10 grains of VV N350 powder, and the Scheumann barrel handled it just fine!

Unfortunately, in SWMBO's gun it was just a little too hot, because the end-of-the barrel compensator didn't release the excess gas as quickly as the holes-in-the-barrel Scheumann barrel did. We saw not only flattening of the primers on rounds fired through that pistol, but in some cases the primer metal actually flowed around the firing-pin hole and over the boundary of the primer cup until it overlayed the base of the cartridge! Decidedly too hot for that gun. Finally, I settled on an 8.0 grain charge of powder, which seemed to be a usable compromise between the two guns.

In 2004, one year almost to the day from when I started using this load, I cracked the slide. STI was very nice about replacing both the barrel AND the slide, and I was able to get rid of the Scheumann Barrel. I was glad of that, because the blowback from the compensating ports was so powerful that I had already spent a few uncomfortable sessions in the Dentist's chair. I had cracked a tooth, which had to be ground down and capped. I wasn't happy about this, but I felt it was worth it to be shooting an Open gun and besides, it was an old tooth and I didn't actually LOSE it, I only had it replaced with the cap.

I note parenthetically that the people in my Section who had been working local matches as Range Officers were glad to hear that I had replaced the Scheumann barrel with a 'regular' barrel. They were being buffetted by the muzzle blast, whether I was shooting the "Loaner" gun or SWMBO was, even more than we were.



Now it is two years since my last change to the load data for the .38 super ammunition, which we shoot between 20,000 and 30,000 rounds per year.

The load has remained consistently at 8.0 grains of VV N350 behind a 115 grain MG Jacketted Bullet. (I won't supply the Over-All Length of the load, because I don't want to tempt anyone to assume that this load will work as well, or as safely, in their gun as it does in ours.) Our load chronograph consistently at about 171PF at major matches, and I don't expect to change it in the near future.

I should note, however, that the Dillon XL650 is getting old and has shown some wear.

Last Summer I replaced the Link Arms - a forged-steel connection between the body of the press and the cyliner. One of them broke, and I replaced both of them while I was doing my mechanical duties. Other parts which have broken include the platform assembly, and the entire Primer Feed Assembly. (Early models of the Primer Feed Assembly failed to protect the operator and the machine, and they were capable of mis-feeding the primers. I once crunched a primer while reloading 9mm ammo, and the primer blew up ... along with several other primers in the primer feed tube. Dillon replaced the entire assembly without change, as they have replaced all other parts of the reloading press, and I have experienced no other problems with this portion of the press.)

The Dillon XL650 is prone to cycling problems with small primers, and I can load ammunition using large primers much faster. The primer disk doesn't seem to align as perfectly and as consistently with the primer punch with small primers as it does with large primers. To illustrate, if I have a constant source of components (including loaded primer feed tubes) and I'm feeling energetic, I can load 1000 rounds of .45acp or 10mm in about one hour, on a good day. Conversely, I load about 400 - 500 rounds of .38 Super in an hour. This is entirely due to the occasional problems conversant with using smaller components, both the primers and the cases (which sometimes don't 'drop' as perfectly as they should when reloading .38 super brass, but which almost always align perfectly using the large .45acp brass.)

My machine is about 15 years old now, and many parts have been replaced. I'm not a good mechanic, so my maintenance is not as good as it should be. I need to send it back to the factory so it can be reconditioned. I've been putting it off for three years now, because I just don't want to miss any club matches because I haven't loaded enough ammunition ahead of time to carry me through the period when the press is not set up and ready to reload.

But I can send it back to Dillon any time I want, and as long as it isn't during the winter (when most people send their loading press back for refurbushing), I can be confident that it will come back to me as good as new, and with a minimum of time lost.

It's just . . . hard for me to face the prospect of not having my XL650 already mounted on my loading bench, and ready to use.

I've grown accustomed to relying on it, and any time I want to spend a half-hour at the bench, I know I can load up enough ammunition to carry me through another club match.

That kind of reliability is hard to find, but I've found it from Dillon and STI.

Life is good.